Bienvenue sur Montreal

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The bus left on time. We were going to have a 3 hours stop-over in Ottawa, the nation’s capital, in the middle of the night but we should be in Montreal by the morning. When we got to Ottawa I asked the bus driver where we would catch the Montreal connection. “That’s it over there.” he said pointing to the bus next to us. I went over and the new driver confirmed it. But what about the 3 hour stop-over? I have no idea because we got straight on it. “So what time do we get to Montreal?” I asked. “2:30am” came the answer. So instead of a three hour wait in Ottawa we now had a six and half hour wait in Montreal as we could hardly check into our hotel at 3am.

Montreal bus depot is not very fascinating and can tell you those hours dragged. Had we been told we would arrive so early I would have arranged a room for the night. Instead we had to wait in the urban jungle - give me bears any day.

When daylight finally broke and people started their days we were able to get breakfast. Except everything was in French. Now I knew this before I arrived but it still took me by surprise. Canada is actually a bi-lingual nation and even in Vancouver, four time zones away, French is present in official documents and signage. In fact Quebec is the only province not to be bi-lingual - French is the only official language. There is even law prohibiting signs on buildings not in French and if you must have signs in other languages inside buildings then the French translation must be shown right next to it in letters at least twice as big. They actually have language police to enforce this. So I haven’t slept all night and I need something to drink - time to recall my schoolboy French. “Deux jus d’orange sil vous plait.” I say in my best French accent. “Eh?” “Erm, deux jus d’orange SVP?” “eh?” “Two orange juices please?” “Ah, oui” she said understanding me this time. I start to wonder if these people do actually speak French or they are making it up. More likely my French is just awful.

We went to our hotel but they still weren’t ready for us to check in yet so we dumped our bags and went for a coffee. This time the waitress saved me by speaking in English the moment she realised I wasn’t French. We drank our coffee and read the paper and watched the Sunday morning crowds go by. When we did finally get into our hotel room I decided to have a little lie down - I woke up six hours later. So much for the overnight bus plan.

We now only had two days to explore Montreal so the next day we hit it with a vengeance. To be honest there isn’t that much to see and our real reason to be here was to experience the French culture. We looked around the old town of Montreal. That took all of an hour. The best bit is the statue of Nelson which stands on a small column in the middle of town. When you consider it was erected just 3 years after the Battle of Trafalgar and 11 years after Quebec had been seceded to the British you can imagine what a poke in the eye it was for the French residents of Montreal. After that we headed out to the Olympic Park to see the majestic structure of the Biodome. When we got there we realised that we were actually looking for the Biosphere which is in a completely different park. Having said that the biodome was a pretty nice building. So we got back on the subway and found the Biosphere. It was a bit disappointing actually as it is just a steel frame. I preferred the biodome. The park was nice though and we wandered around it for a while.

Our final stop on the whistle stop tour was the underground city. Like Calgary, Montreal had tried to beat the cold weather by putting in covered walkway but instead of them being flying walkways like in Calgary these were underground. It seemed intriguing but when we arrived it was very reminiscent of something we had seen before. Sydney has exactly the same underground mall type passages with links to the subway. They just don’t go on about it. We did a bit of window shopping and then returned to the hotel.

Next morning was more job hunting (come on UK employers don’t you recognise quality when you see it) before heading back to the underground city for some shopping. We realised we can’t go to interviews looking like backpacking scarecrows so we had to take advantage of the cheap Canadian dollar while we could. Besides Lins had fallen in love with a pair of shoes during the window shopping the day before so I wasn’t going to hear the last of it until she had tried them on. It is amazing how well the French speaking assistants speak English when they have a matching handbag to cross-sell. It was strange actually when you were going to shops that some were clearly English speaking, though they always address you in French to start off with. As soon as they know you are English their broad Canadian accent comes out and you are no longer in French speaking Canada. In the coffee shop I overheard a group of school girls speaking in an animated way. They kept slipping between French and English as if it was the same language, though I did notice it was the f-word that seemed cause the switches to English. But I guess that’s the future that the French speaking population fear with all their language laws. That one day people will stop switching between languages and just speak English. And life will be a little less interesting if that happens.

Our time in Montreal and indeed Canada is up and we must catch the train back across the border to the USA. The next stop is our last

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